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<h2>Reference Types</h2>
<hr>

<h4>Why use them?</h4>

<p>HEURIST is not just an internet bookmark manager. In fact, that is a small, 
although useful,&nbsp; part of the system. It is also (on the way to being) a 
full bibliographic system. The core bibliographic functionality - bibliographic 
definitions and efficient record storage - were developed in February/March 
2006, import and export from/to EndNote Refer format should be prototyped in 
March 2006 (with others to follow shortly), and we should have bibliographic 
output formats running in April or May.</p>

<p>Unlike the vast majority of bibliographic systems (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite 
and many other 'flat file' approaches), we:</p>

<ol>
  <li>store bibliographic data in a true relational database, providing web 
  accessibility and the possibility to link directly to bibliographic 
  information through a stable bibliographic ID;<br>
&nbsp;</li>
  <li>store bibliographic 'container' information (journal, book volume, 
  conference proceedings, series and publisher data)&nbsp; <b>non-redundantly</b>. 
  This has advantages in consistency and data quality - a change in one place, 
  such as a correction to the title of a book, changes all entries which depend 
  on that book;<br>
&nbsp;</li>
  <li>store individual 'bookmarks' and personal notes attached to shared 
  bibliographic records which are stored only once for all users;<br>
&nbsp;</li>
  <li>provide facilities for community review and individual commentary on 
  bibliographic entries through attached wiki and blog entries for every 
  reference.</li>
</ol>

<h4>How to use them</h4>

<p>When adding a personal note or bookmarking an Internet resource, reference 
type is set automatically. However it can be changed in the Bibliographic Info 
tab of the Edit page. </p>

<p>Click <u>Add note or reference</u> at the top left of the HEURIST screen, and 
select a reference type from the pulldown on the popup window. Enter a title for 
the work. You will be taken directly to the Bibliographic Info tab of the Edit 
screen, and appropriate fields will be displayed for this reference type.</p>

<p>The type of each resource listed is shown by an icon left of the resource 
title in Heurist searches. The icons used are listed in the
<a href="reftype_legend.html">search page legend</a> (the icons are a first cut 
- we hope to get a professional designer to work on a more consistent and 
intuitive set).</p>

<p>If you change reference type from the pulldown in the Bibliographic Info tab, 
the set of fields dispalyed will change, and HEURIST will do its best to 
reallocate your data to equivalent fields in the new reference type (if they 
exist). It does not lose data which is not displayed until you actually save the 
record, so you can revert or change to another reference type and recover data 
which has disappeared (because there was no field to hold it in the intermediate 
type).</p>

<h4>How to create them</h4>

<p>You can't! But, Heurist is more flexible than you can imagine! We have an 
administrative interface which allows us to create new field types and new 
reference types (more generally, new resource record types) in minutes. Expect 
to see new types of record appear in the database over the next few months - we 
are considering adding events, conferences, research projects, thesis topics, 
centres etc. as new reference (record) types. The limit is not in the software 
but in how broad a domain we decide to address. For them moment we are 
restricting ourselves to notes, internet bookmarks and bibliographic references 
as the most critical areas.</p>

<hr>
<h3>See also</h3>
<p><b>Edit - Bibliographic Info tab: </b>The third tab in the Edit page provides 
a flexible data entry interface allowing the entry of typed bibliographic 
resources, with distinct sets of entry fields. Resources may be owned by parent 
resources eg. chapters by books, or books by series and series by publishers. 
Data entry at up to five levels occurs within a seamless interface, with 
predictive search into the database to identify existing records.
<a href="edit_bibliographic_info.html" style="text-decoration: none">more ...</a></p>

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